


A Heart-Shaped Ruby

by Untherius



Category: The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13139385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: Retracing old ground means also retracing old history.





	A Heart-Shaped Ruby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaeveBran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeveBran/gifts).



Jimmy Dobyne pushed the driver's side door shut on his beat-up 1943 Ford pickup. Black, of course. Oh, the company had started making other colors, but Jimmy preferred not to tamper with tradition. Well, not much. It was the only thing that seemed to keep his wife grounded.

He glanced over his shoulder as Fisher extracted herself from the passenger side. He sighed again. “Fisher,” he said, “are you going to let me be a gentleman some time this year?”

She shrugged. “Why start now?” she teased.

He smirked at her. “Very funny.”

“I still don't understand why we're here,” she said, for what had to be the hundredth time since he'd first broached the subject several months before.

“Because...”

“Yes, yes, yes, I _do_ understand. Up here.” She tapped her head. “But not here.” She tapped her chest.

“Just wanted to come back to where it all began. Where our roots are.”

Fisher walked around the car, her high-heeled shoes clicking on the pavement. “You're nuts, you know that, Jimmy?”

He gazed into her eyes. They still held that furious spark that had been there since he'd first looked into them all those years ago. Forty-odd years of marriage and three children had put crow's feet on the corners of those eyes. But they still served as windows into a soul just as feisty as ever.

Sometimes she seemed to have tempered in her middle age. They'd go along like any normal couple. Then someone, usually Jimmy, would say something that would set her off. When that happened, it was just like when they had met, all fire and oil.

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I do.”

He slid an arm around her waist, and looked across the levy, just as he had the night they'd reached their not-so-little agreement. It had to have been the most unorthodox proposal ever. In fact, neither of them had ever been completely sure who had proposed to whom, or which one of them had actually said yes, or how.

But after that, one thing had led to another, they'd exchanged the usual vows, with rings, kissing, the works. Jimmy had been completely lost at the wedding, of course. What with the veritable horde of guests from her circle, he hadn't known if he'd been coming or going, as the saying went.

Oh, they'd still had their fights, often over money. She had plenty of it, or at least access to more than enough. But he had just as much pride in his theoretical ability to get by with what he made off the sweat of his own brow.

And so when his own family situation collapsed with the deaths of his parents, he'd announced his decision to join the Army. Fisher had been understandably shocked, and just as understandably opposed to the idea. But he'd done it anyway, and she'd had little choice but to pack up and move right along with him. But she'd complained bitterly the entire time, just as powerfully as Jimmy had ignored the societal expectations from her side.

Somehow, they'd worked through it. Jimmy suspected the military discipline had stabilized him to a point. It also hadn't hurt that Society still considered the military to be an acceptable career path. That had turned out to be more so once the War had broken out.

Fisher had been openly relieved to learn that Jimmy had been too old by then to be sent off to the front lines, and quite frankly, so was he. So he'd channeled all his frustration with, well, everything into the recruits being run through Basic Training. His CO had been so impressed, he'd been promoted once the war had ended.

“Do we really have to stay here, Jimmy?” Willow asked.

“It's all paid for,” he said.

He took her hand and together they strolled down the walk toward the grand front entrance. Oh, the memories! Some good, some not so good, but all of life was like that.

He pulled a small box out of his pocket.

“What's that?” she asked, though he was pretty sure she knew anyway.

Quite early in their relationship, he'd come to realize that most of her questions were rhetorical. And she was easily sharp enough to know that he knew. Yet she always asked them anyway, probably out of habit more than anything.

“Our love,” he said, “was forged of fire, and in fire. I thought this was fitting.”

She opened the box and gasped. “Oh, Jimmy! You shouldn't have!”

He shrugged. “Whatever you say, darling.” He winked, then gently pulled a heart-shaped ruby out of the box, one dangling from a chain of white gold. He carefully fastened it around her neck, where it hung just about where her collarbones met.

“It's beautiful,” she gushed.

“Not as beautiful as you,” he said.

“Now you're just flattering me for sex.” She closed the gap between them and kissed him.

For a few brief moments, he was back there again, a young man in his prime, full of vim and vigor, being caught up in a whirlwind that he hadn't then known would consume the rest of his life.

* * *

Jimmy propped himself on an arm and gazed at his wife in the morning sunlight streaming through a window. Her eyes opened and met his.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.

Fisher smiled and moaned contentedly. “You still got it, Jimmy,” she said.

“I'm as good once as I ever was.” Then he winced. “Think I pulled something, though. I tell ya, youth is wasted on the young.”

She chuckled. “No argument here. At least I'm still in control of my pelvic floor...barely.”

He laughed. “Listen to us, Fisher. Two old farts sounding like two young farts.”

“Old farts? Speak for yourself, Mister Dobyne!” She bapped him playfully on the arm. “Besides, we're not _that_ old yet.”

“Not until the grandkid is born. How'd that go...parents never get old, but grandparents are born old?”

“Ha, ha.”

He winked at her. “You know I love you.”

“And I love you, too. Can't imagine why.” She winked back at him.

“There's still time before breakfast.”

“Time for what?” she asked, faining innocence.

He leaned over and kissed her.


End file.
